Musk takeover

[Fru-Gal]

OK, this is scarily plausible… A lawsuit is proceeding questioning the weird voting in the election.

https://spoonamore.substack.com/p/duty-to-warn-letter-to-vp-harris

This caught my eye:

When Mr. Musk announced his $1M lottery for people to go online and sign a pledge to vote for Trump, I became personally suspicious of why such a promotion would be done.  I signed up to see what information he wanted and what the pledge actually stated.  He did not want to know people’s socials or send them texts.  To sign up you had to provide your street address.  That was all they cared about.  Once they had the people’s names, and street address this would allow for building a pool of ghost voters who could logically be marked for fake ballots, structured in a manner which matched ePollBook and precinct data.  You, as a member of law enforcement, understand criminals need certain pre-conditions to act.  A database of pledged supporters with street addresses is required for this hack.  Law enforcement should immediately find the team of programmers who pulled the lottery data capture. They will find those programmers immediately parsed the data into a system based on voting precincts and created macros to constantly update the pledged lists of who had cast a vote, and who had not.  The programmers likely did not know they were working on a system to be used to steal the election.  When confronted with that fact, law enforcement would likely gain cooperating witnesses.

[DoubleDown]

Trump won.

Of course he did! It was never in doubt, he's the (likely) antichrist ;-)

"It (the antichrist) prospered in everything it did, and truth was thrown to the ground." Daniel 8:12
"He (the antichrist) will cause astounding devastation and will succeed in whatever he does." Daniel 8:24
"The king (antichrist) will do as he pleases." Daniel 11:36
"...they worshiped the beast (antichrist) and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”" Revelation 13:4
"The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies..." Revelation 13:5
"...he (the antichrist) was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest." Revelation 6:2

Based on the above, Musk never stood a chance. But he'll probably still figure in Trump's efforts to destroy mankind, I'd wager. I know many people will dismiss this stuff as nonsense, but even diehard skeptics ought to find it awfully strange just how closely things with Trump align with these very old prophecies.

[Metalcat]

Oh, were back on the Antichrist thing? Cool cool

[RetiredAt63]

Oh, we're back on the Antichrist thing? Cool cool

If he starts a nuclear war that causes a nuclear winter and basically puts us back into the stone age, I'll give him the anti-Christ thing.

Lots of countries have gone through this political upheaval in the last 80 years. Americans are just noticing because it's them, and of course the American Exceptionalism is rearing it's head. If they can't be best then they want to be worst.  It's so ingrained most probably don't even realize how it is shaping their thinking. (Yes we all have blind spots about what we believe about our countries)

Former trading partners and allies are watching in horror? astonishment? bemusement?  and trying to avoid being sucked into the whirlpool.

Yes, colour me cynical.

[ChpBstrd]

Lots of countries have gone through this political upheaval in the last 80 years. Americans are just noticing because it's them, and of course the American Exceptionalism is rearing it's head. If they can't be best then they want to be worst.  It's so ingrained most probably don't even realize how it is shaping their thinking.

[DoubleDown]

Oh, were back on the Antichrist thing? Cool cool

Well, I never left it ;-)

If it should turn out in the coming years that it's true, then in the midst of the earthquakes and wars and asteroids and seas of fire, I'm going to take you to lunch and raise a toast to you, and I promise the words "I told you so!" will never leave my lips. :-)

[Fru-Gal]

The USA hasn’t gone through political upheaval in 80 years?! What?!

[Metalcat]

Oh, were back on the Antichrist thing? Cool cool

Well, I never left it ;-)

If it should turn out in the coming years that it's true, then in the midst of the earthquakes and wars and asteroids and seas of fire, I'm going to take you to lunch and raise a toast to you, and I promise the words "I told you so!" will never leave my lips. :-)

Man, it was so nice being in Europe recently where the US wasn't treated like they center of the fucking universe.

Canada got more coverage than the US on the news while we were there because we had one of the most remarkable elections in the history of the world recently.

It really solidified my desire to leave North America when we retire.

Fascism/authoritarianism/dictators damaging democratic systems is not new or special. This happens throughout the world, throughout history, it's just that America is a very, very young country and likes to think that this happening to them is somehow truly exceptional.

It's godawful, it's horrifying, it's like watching a dumpster fire inside a train wreck, but it's nowhere near the first country to be torn apart by this kind of bullshit.

Also, the earthquakes and fires and shit were going to happen regardless of who got elected in the US.

[reeshau]

I would have thought the antichrist would do better in court.

[DoubleDown]

I would have thought the antichrist would do better in court.

Hasn't he done just fine in court? All criminal convictions and charges thrown out, given lifetime immunity by the Supreme Court for his crimes committed in office, no personal repercussions at all. Able to incite an insurrection with no consequence, take home truckloads of highly classified documents and store them in a bathroom and ballroom, sell pardons, use the White House for personal gain, etc. No one else could have even dreamed of evading any legal consequences as Trump has. Ten years ago I would have said no one could be above the law as he has demonstrated. Even his state felony convictions in New York amounted to exactly nothing; no punishment whatsoever. If anything, they further propelled him to the presidency (see: infamous mug shot which was turned into a rallying cry and merchandise to re-elect him).

[reeshau]

I would have thought the antichrist would do better in court.

Hasn't he done just fine in court? All criminal convictions and charges thrown out, given lifetime immunity by the Supreme Court for his crimes committed in office, no personal repercussions at all. Able to incite an insurrection with no consequence, take home truckloads of highly classified documents and store them in a bathroom and ballroom, sell pardons, use the White House for personal gain, etc. No one else could have even dreamed of evading any legal consequences as Trump has. Ten years ago I would have said no one could be above the law as he has demonstrated. Even his state felony convictions in New York amounted to exactly nothing; no punishment whatsoever. If anything, they further propelled him to the presidency (see: infamous mug shot which was turned into a rallying cry and merchandise to re-elect him).

In his personal life, yes.  He is hardly the only one.  *cough* OJ *cough*

The judicial branch seems to be the primary guardrail stymying his more outlandish policy initiatives.  There, despite choosing a significant portion of the court himself, he has been largely denied.  If this was an evil master plan, that has been s a big miss.

[DoubleDown]

I would have thought the antichrist would do better in court.

Hasn't he done just fine in court? All criminal convictions and charges thrown out, given lifetime immunity by the Supreme Court for his crimes committed in office, no personal repercussions at all. Able to incite an insurrection with no consequence, take home truckloads of highly classified documents and store them in a bathroom and ballroom, sell pardons, use the White House for personal gain, etc. No one else could have even dreamed of evading any legal consequences as Trump has. Ten years ago I would have said no one could be above the law as he has demonstrated. Even his state felony convictions in New York amounted to exactly nothing; no punishment whatsoever. If anything, they further propelled him to the presidency (see: infamous mug shot which was turned into a rallying cry and merchandise to re-elect him).

In his personal life, yes.  He is hardly the only one.  *cough* OJ *cough*

The judicial branch seems to be the primary guardrail stymying his more outlandish policy initiatives.  There, despite choosing a significant portion of the court himself, he has been largely denied.  If this was an evil master plan, that has been s a big miss.

I'll have to disagree. The Wannabe King is doing as he pleases, flat-out ignoring court orders he doesn't like. As just one example, all the people sent to El Salvador and South Sudan and who-knows-where-else are still there, despite numerous court orders to bring them back. The single guy they brought back (Kilmar A-G) was only so they could charge him with numerous counts of human trafficking, and so he remains in custody. Besides, I think we're just getting started (i.e., things will likely get worse, particularly after another year or two).

Laughed at *cough OJ *cough*  :-)  Too true, too true.

[LennStar]

What a Brit living in Germany things about what happens in LA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNxSIRYTMSE

Spoiler: He is not amused.

[mtnrider]

No longer about the Musk takeover the of the US government, but since the government is still using Grok:

Elon Musk still isn't happy with how his AI platform answers divisive questions, pledging in recent days to retrain Grok so it will answer in ways more to his liking.

Why it matters: Efforts to steer AI in particular directions could exacerbate the danger of a technology already known for its convincing but inaccurate hallucinations.

The big picture: Expect to see more of this in the future as governments and businesses may choose or even create their own AI models that try to sway generated responses on everything from LGBTQ rights to territorial disputes.

This was rumored in the valley for a while, but with only rumors and ex-employees as sources.  Now Musk is saying the quiet part out loud.  It's not just Musk, but also Meta, that want to bend their models towards the right.

Don't rely on LLMs any more than you'd rely on information from the Heritage Foundation.

Aside: I'd say the Electronic Frontier Foundation too, but I haven't heard of any companies retraining left.  Google did try to add diversity to people in images.  In my opinion though, that's not the same.  They got dinged earlier when their photo blending software lightened non-white people's skins due to lack of training data of non-white people and knew there was a deficit.  Apparently the corpus of the world's knowledge that Grok was trained on is bad because, as we all know, reality has a well known liberal centrist bias.

[GuitarStv]

I've never seen any reason to rely on an LLM to begin with, so this doesn't seem like a shocker to me.

[mtnrider]

I've never seen any reason to rely on an LLM to begin with, so this doesn't seem like a shocker to me.

That's probably the case of most people here.  IRL I talk to people all the time who believe that LLMs are the communications of an omniscient god.  They are making business plans, travel plans, vibe coding without thinking critically about the results.

Even the best LLMs are more like a near sighted talking dog.  (See what I did there!?)  It's amazing that the dog can talk, but don't rely on it.

Now that I think of it though, would Grok be worse than what someone in the Trump administration could come up with?  It seems that RFK used one to produce a heath report with fake research, Gabbard asked one what JFK files should be declassified, and the tariffs may well have been generated by an LLM.  Since LLMs are nondeterministic, perhaps they'd accidentally do something that'd help the country, even if they were using a right-wing Grok.

[Travis]

Elon's little army in government has been thinning out the last few weeks.

https://www.wired.com/story/big-balls-coristine-doge-resigned-us-government/

[GuitarStv]

I've never seen any reason to rely on an LLM to begin with, so this doesn't seem like a shocker to me.

That's probably the case of most people here.  IRL I talk to people all the time who believe that LLMs are the communications of an omniscient god.  They are making business plans, travel plans, vibe coding without thinking critically about the results.

Even the best LLMs are more like a near sighted talking dog.  (See what I did there!?)  It's amazing that the dog can talk, but don't rely on it.

Now that I think of it though, would Grok be worse than what someone in the Trump administration could come up with?  It seems that RFK used one to produce a heath report with fake research, Gabbard asked one what JFK files should be declassified, and the tariffs may well have been generated by an LLM.  Since LLMs are nondeterministic, perhaps they'd accidentally do something that'd help the country, even if they were using a right-wing Grok.

AI vs Trump administration - I'd put them in a similar category of competence.  :P

[RetiredAt63]

I've never seen any reason to rely on an LLM to begin with, so this doesn't seem like a shocker to me.

That's probably the case of most people here.  IRL I talk to people all the time who believe that LLMs are the communications of an omniscient god.  They are making business plans, travel plans, vibe coding without thinking critically about the results.

Even the best LLMs are more like a near sighted talking dog.  (See what I did there!?)  It's amazing that the dog can talk, but don't rely on it.

Now that I think of it though, would Grok be worse than what someone in the Trump administration could come up with?  It seems that RFK used one to produce a heath report with fake research, Gabbard asked one what JFK files should be declassified, and the tariffs may well have been generated by an LLM.  Since LLMs are nondeterministic, perhaps they'd accidentally do something that'd help the country, even if they were using a right-wing Grok.

AI vs Trump administration - I'd put them in a similar category of competence.  :P

Ah but can AI match the level of selfcenterness and self-absorption and greed that trump demonstrates?  I suppose they could train it in.    ;-(